"While it’s unlikely Pepe’s official death will stop extremists from co-opting his image, this was, perhaps, the most effective way for Furie to reclaim his character; Pepe’s soul has returned to his creator. Rest in Peace," CBR author Shaun Manning said in the post.

The frog began as a harmless cartoon in 2005, Furie has said, in the Fantagraphics' comic book “Boy’s Club.” Pepe gained popularity over the next few years online as a meme before his more recent association with white supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and the so-called “alt-right.”

An attendee holds up a sign of Pepe the Frog during a campaign event with Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Sept. 29, 2016.Damon Winter / The New York Times via Redux

Furie said in a post on TIME’s website the day before the campaign was launched that it was “completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate, and that racists and anti-Semites are using a once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate.”

The ADL said that while cartoon’s origins were inoffensive, it had been increasingly appropriated for “bigoted themes” in "a tendency exacerbated by the controversial and contentious 2016 presidential election."